


Purple Plum Torte

by Archetype_ElectraHeart



Series: Inked [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Darcy bakes, Fluff, Gen, OTP: Bucky and Plums, both of them have poor impulse control, bucky helps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 02:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7247851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archetype_ElectraHeart/pseuds/Archetype_ElectraHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy and Bucky make a cake, and eat a cake, and generally behave like children. Steve is amused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purple Plum Torte

Bucky was trailing after Darcy at one of New York’s many summer street fairs as she examined trinkets and flipped through boxes of vinyl records and shoved various street foods into his hands to sample, funnel cakes and kebabs and sausage sandwiches and some kind of fancy ice cream with blackberries in it that she kept stealing bites of. 

Steve was off on the other side of the country for some kind of Avengers-related emergency, so Darcy insisted that the two of them get out of the tower. She got restless when Steve was gone on a mission, Bucky had found, and so was accustomed to following Darcy around the city that had once been familiar but now felt a bit like a foreign country. Darcy was a good tour guide to the new New York.

Darcy also had a way of drawing bits of the past out of him without it feeling like an interrogation, without making him aware of the splintered state of his memory. Today, sweaty and sun-warmed in the heat and humidity of a New York summer day, she was chattering on about her favorite parts of summer as a child--locally-grown strawberries and peach cobbler and barbeques in her backyard in Georgia. 

And listening to her wax poetic about her mom’s peach cobbler and the sweet taste of gelato in his mouth brought forth his own sense memory. “Plums,” he murmured. “Used to buy a bag of them on my way home from work and Stevie and I would gorge ourselves on plums out on the fire escape.”

“Plums!” Darcy laughed and started pulling him over towards the farmer’s market section of the fair. “If it’s plums you want, then plums you shall have.”

 

 

Of course, it wasn’t quite late enough in the summer for the plums to be at their peak. So the single plum that Darcy and Bucky split between them upon arriving back at the tower was tart, not ripe enough for the juices to spill out over chins and slide down wrists in the way he remembered.

Darcy spluttered, face scrunched up in a way that made Bucky laugh. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, dude. We’ve got to cook these if we’re going to actually eat them and like it.” She pulled her StarkPad over and navigated to some food blog, pulling up a recipe for plum cake and reading the blog post out loud to him until he was nearly drooling.

When she finally looked up from the screen, Bucky said, “We gotta make that.”

Darcy nodded, comically serious. “We gotta.”

“And then eat it.”

Darcy paused. “It’s technically supposed to be better on the second day…” At the look on Bucky’s face she backpedaled, “But that is for other people, people who have discipline and self-control. Not for us. But!” She waved a stern finger at him. “We save a piece for Steve.”

Bucky put on his most innocent expression and nodded. “Of course we will.”

  
  


 

So Darcy sourced all the other ingredients they needed from their own pantry, and a few from the common kitchen upstairs, while Bucky started pitting and cutting up the plums, casually twirling the knife a few times when he was finished and Darcy was still creaming butter in the mixer. She watched the movement of the knife as she let the mixer run. “Neat trick.”

Bucky caught the knife in mid-air, putting an end to the acrobatics. "Thanks."

“Can you teach me to do that?”

“Steve’ll have a heart attack if he sees you twirling a knife.”

Darcy smirked. “Exactly.”

Bucky barked out a laugh and, still grinning, said, “I like the way you think.”

  
  
  


The plum cake had been out of the oven for 10 minutes.

Bucky slowly inched a hand closer to it, (just for a taste, really) but had snatched his hand back before he had even properly processed the stinging sensation on the top of his hand from Darcy smacking him away with the wooden spoon again. “Ouch.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s still too hot. You’ll only burn yourself and you won’t be able to taste a thing.”

He pouted, shamelessly trying to manipulate her. “But I’m hungry.”

“Liar.”

 

Ten minutes later, Darcy gave in and served up slices of cake for each of them.

 

Thirty minutes later the entirety of the cake had been demolished, devoured, utterly obliterated, and the two of them were collapsed on the couch, clutching their stomachs and groaning.

Darcy rolled over, accidentally jabbing an elbow into Bucky’s knee and making him hiss. “I should not have done that. Why did I think I could keep up with your appetite?”

“Because I dared you to,” Bucky muttered as he resettled his leg under her arm and rearranged the pillow behind his head. “Didn’t think you’d be so competitive.”

Darcy jammed her toes into his ribs in retribution. “I am never eating again.”

Bucky groaned and swatted at her ankle. “At least for a few days.”

 

Steve trudged through door a few minutes later, the sound of his shield hitting the floor with an audible thump. “Darcy? Bucky? You guys home?”

Darcy groaned miserably in answer as Bucky called out, "In here!”

Steve came around the corner into the living room looking concerned, but quickly took in the stack of empty plates littered with cake crumbs on the coffee table and the way Darcy was cradling her stomach and the way Bucky was sprawled, heavy and lethargic, on the couch, and grinned. 

“Did you two even save me any of whatever that was?”

“We ate it all,” Darcy murmured. “I told him we had to save a piece for you but then he said there was no way I could eat as much as him so we ate it all.”

  
Steve shook his head and walked over to press a kiss to Darcy’s temple. “You two are a bad influence on each other.”

Bucky and Darcy simultaneously pointed accusatory fingers at one another, a chorus of "he/she started it" ringing out from opposing ends of the couch.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Have the link to the [recipe that started this plot bunny](http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/10/purple-plum-torte/)
> 
> and to a [photoset for this fic ](https://pepperpottsblogs.tumblr.com/post/146184880245/purple-plum-torte-part-3-of-inked-and-listening-to)
> 
> Subscribe to this series for Bucky teaching Darcy how to twirl knives and build improvised explosive devices while Clint and Natasha help and Steve rips out his hair.


End file.
